


Things you said when I was crying

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Skimmons BROTP, Trauma, depressing as all heck, jemma simmons defense squad, post 4x15 spec, post framework, return from framework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 01:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9944972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: If only rescuing their friends from the Framework was the hard part. If only coming back didn't take ten times more courage.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dilkirani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I have not seen any of Season 4. Lolololol. I am in a place where I can't watch so I get my info through instagram and from Elaine, Rani, and Izzy. So this is what I could do with what I knew!

_A drop_

“Hey.” Daisy appears beside Jemma, taking in her full tumbler and the thoroughly re-folded napkin on the bar, and squeezes her shoulder. “It’s almost time to go.”

Jemma nods but doesn’t move, so Daisy takes the stool beside her.

“What’s a girl gotta do to get a drink around here?” she mutters, scanning the room for a bartender, a waiter, anyone.

Jemma chuckles and when Daisy turns back around, a second later, a beer sits on the bar.

“What – how’d you—“

“It’s not real,” Jemma reminds her.

“Yeah, it’s not _real_ real, but you’re not supposed to be able to – whatever that was.” Daisy takes a tentative, distrustful sip.

“The Framework is notably susceptible to manipulation.” Jemma wonders if this conversation would be interesting if her own voice weren’t so dull, if she’d not long ago lost any curiosity about the extent of this alternate reality. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s not exactly steady.”

“Yeah, the Fitzsimmons love tearing holes in this universe and all that.”

“It’s not _just_ that, though.” She tips her glass to peer at the melting ice. “The Framework is in our minds. So once we’ve rejected it, we control it. This bar wasn’t here an hour ago. It was an alley, a blind end, until I decided it should be a bar with exceptionally strong drinks. That’s how I remind myself where we are. The laws of physics don’t exactly apply here.”

“So why a bar?” Daisy prods gently. “You could make anything, go anywhere your mind can create. Why are you spending your last few minutes before we go back – _back_ back, with everyone, with _Fitz_ – drinking alone in a bar that’s more Lance Hunter’s speed than yours?”

Jemma has been avoiding her friend’s gaze – friend seems such a paltry word, after all they’ve endured in the past three months. She’s been studying the grain of the bar but at Daisy’s question she lets out a shaky breath and looks up at the top shelf of bottles.

When she turns to Daisy, there is a single tear slipping down her cheek.

“I don’t know if I can go back, Daisy,” she whispers.

“ _Jemma—_ “

“And before you tell me that I’m mad, that this is what we’ve worked for, that this place isn’t even _real_ , I _know._ I swear I do. There’s not a single moment that I’m not excruciatingly aware of those facts. For three months I’ve been living on the hope of someday seeing that ridiculous furrow in Fitz’s forehead when I’m being obtuse and watching him flounder as he tries to decide whether to put his hands on his hips or cross his arms, because the Fitz here never does those things, but—“ Her own hands flounder now, her panic revealing itself. “Now that the moment is here, I don’t know if I can do it.”

“It’ll be him, Jem, I know it will,” Daisy assures her, placing a hand on her wrist to steady her. It’s a mark of how they’ve both grown in the four years since they met, that Daisy isn’t freaking out, that she’s calming Jemma, that Jemma is letting her. “He’ll be the same as you remember.”

“That’s not – that’s not what I’m worried about,” Jemma admits. “For Fitz – for all of them – this will feel like a dream. A truly terrible, vivid, tangible nightmare, but _not real_. You and I, Daisy, we’ve _lived_ this. And you’re clearly stronger than I am to be so unruffled by all of it but… I’m afraid Fitz won’t recognize me.” Her voice shakes as she adds quietly, “I don’t know if I recognize myself.”

What she expects least of all is for Daisy to smile.

“Four years ago, this stupid smart friend I have jumped out of a plane to save all of her friends and all of humanity. A couple weeks after that she threw herself on a grenade. Later that year she saved her best friend from certain death. There was a time she went undercover in the most evil organization to ever evil, sacrificing her own happiness for like a year afterwards, then she tried to kill this jackass we all hate, then she survived for six months on a hell planet. If you hadn’t changed, Jemma, I’d be seriously concerned.”

Jemma laughs despite herself.

“But last week you nearly died in two realities to save me. You might be different than yesterday, than last year, than when you and Fitz first met, but the important stuff has stayed the same. Fitz will still love you. If he doesn’t, I’ll kick him in the nuts. And you’ll learn to love yourself again.” Daisy pushes her unfinished beer away and steps off her stool. She hugs Jemma around the shoulders with both arms. “And if you don’t,” she murmurs, “I’ll love you enough for the both of us. Now get ready to go back. Should be any minute now.”

Jemma’s smile fades as soon as Daisy has gone. Another tear tracks its way down to the corner of her mouth, where she presses it between her lips, imagining it tastes of candy floss and new beginnings but feeling only the burn of the salt.

 

 

_A trickle_

The first thing Daisy sees when she comes to are the faces of Coulson and May, hovering over her, still blurry as she blinks away three months of artificial sleep.

The second she’s sure the helmet’s no longer on her head, she launches herself straight up at them, hooking both of them around the neck with an arm. They are the same people she saw in the Framework, but they _feel_ different.

“Why isn’t she waking up?!?”

Daisy might not be in love with the guy, but she’s missed Fitz – their Fitz – almost as much as Jemma. This is the highest she’s heard his voice go in years, and certainly the highest it’s been in the last three months. But it’s not from lack of use.

It’s from sheer panic as he leans over Jemma’s prone form.

He looks bad. The Fitz in the Framework looked _bad_ , but in a way that made Daisy snort and Jemma roll her eyes. More than any of the others, he shows the signs of living off an IV, and more than any of the others, he is clearly not ready to be back if Jemma is not back too.

“She has to choose to come back,” Daisy reminds him, stepping up beside him.

“Then why isn’t she--?!” He reaches for the helmet, hands visibly shaking.

“No, Fitz, you can’t!” Daisy cries, tugging him back. “If you pull her out too soon she could—“

“Why isn’t she waking up?” he repeats in a pleading whisper. He sinks to his knees beside Jemma, his hands finding one of hers without even looking.

Daisy knows why. But she won’t say until they know for sure—

With a great gasp, Jemma’s whole body seizes and her eyes fly open.

  

The buzz of activity around her is too much. Someone is working off the helmet, someone else is helping her to her feet (too soon; her head swims, her legs want to give way), and Fitz –

It is like returning from Maveth, except she returns now with a hell shared with friends. (Is it better? She thinks it is much, much worse.) It is too much too soon, and Fitz –

He supports her when she nearly falls, one arm around her waist, the other under her arm and around her shoulders. His face is so close, and she wants to count the minutes that’ve passed since she was actually this close to him, to Fitz, not to some other version, but Fitz—

The last time she saw him, he was shaking in death shudders beneath her. Of course it wasn’t _him_ , but the last time she saw a Fitz most closely resembling this one, he’d nearly killed her. And she’d killed him.

It is worse than she’d imagined. She is crying silently, exploring his face with her fingertips, desperate relief tempered still with acidic fear. _Is it really you_? she wants to ask. She remembers him asking something similar once, several lifetimes ago.

He is murmuring things, soft “Oh Jemma”s and “I’m so sorry”s, though of course he doesn’t know the half of it. He presses kisses to her eyelids as if he could take all her tears into him and exorcise her of this confusion; he kisses even her lips, bloodless and unresponsive. He kisses her knuckles and she notices there is no dirt under her fingernails, though just moments ago, in that other place, she’d begun fretting how’d she’d look for her return.

Maybe AIDA has won. Because Jemma scrabbled for ninety-seven days for this moment, and she cannot enjoy it. In her darkest moments she considered abandoning the rest of the team to save Fitz, and now she has him, she cannot see him through her guilt for those thoughts and her remembrances of the actions of something with his face.

She wonders if she shouldn’t’ve woken up.

She wonders if Fitz is wondering the same, as he stands there so bravely while she is silent, while she cries, while she remains limp in his loving arms.

 

 

_A flood_

She should report to the med unit. There is still blood on her head, on her leg, and pain in both places; after this length of time the injuries will probably have permanent effects.

She should report to debrief. There is much to discuss. Even aside from the personal conversations that need to take place -- the slow, painful, therapeutic removal of the emotional barbs – there are strategic considerations to be weighed.

She should help Coulson to make sure AIDA is properly restrained and eventually dismantled. He will need a scientist’s eye to make sure the thing is done properly and that nothing like this can happen again. Then again, it was scientists who got them into this situation.

She cannot recall ever disobeying post-mission protocol like this. Then again, this hadn’t been a mission, had it? It was guerilla warfare. It was her life.

It is only when she is already curled up, knees to her chest, on top of the covers that she realizes that her first instinct had brought her automatically – _robotically,_ she thinks darkly – to their room, to Fitz’s side of the bed. It is only when she realizes this that she begins to sob in earnest.

The intellectual part of her knows this is the only reality she wants to be in. The other was organized, created, structured, all things she should love, but here there is a chaos she will always find beautiful. It is not unlike the eerie difference between humans and the humanoid LMDs.

But she cannot reason away the way her bones feel like they’re crumbling in the flames searing her body. She chose to come back. She chose this pain and chaos over the fake, maybe-someday-happy other place. And right now she cannot remember why.

She needs to grieve. She needs to be furious and depressed and confused and torn asunder and lonely and hollow and fucking pissed off at the fucking universe for fucking putting her through this, _again_. She needs to cry until her throat is hoarse and her abdomen hurts and the pillow cloth is soaked. She imagines May is meditating, Coulson is pouring himself a glass of something that will burn going down, Mack is already back in the garage, taking something apart as he finds some way to blame himself for what happened. Maybe this is foolish; maybe they, too, are privately collapsing in on themselves. But right now, she feels weak. And she needs to.

Fitz comes in after some time. He hasn’t showered or changed, she can tell just from the way he smells. This thought redoubles her sobs; how could she not have noticed that he wasn’t himself?

He settles on the bed behind her, stretched fully out on her side, not touching her, silent.

She nearly tells him to go away. She wants to shatter where no one can see her. She’s out of habit of letting another person in. If he leaves, she will fix herself, like she’s done for months now. She will emerge later, face scrubbed, hair brushed, not smiling but with a calm determination that will fool everyone into thinking she is the superwoman who helped Daisy save them all.

And then with a force that has her choking for air, she remembers he is hurting too, in ways she’ll never understand, and that in turn she cannot expect him to understand the full depth of her pain. She remembers that it’s possible to take care of yourself and someone else at the same time. She remembers that she’s not said a word to him yet on this side of reality. And something deeper than programming thrusts the flames out of her heart, lets them consume the rest of her but saves that little bit of her for Fitz.

She remembers how it feels to turn into him, to clutch the back of his shirt and bury her face in his neck and feel him cry with her.

She remembers why she came back.


End file.
